The Poker Affiliate Blog

Back from Gib now and had a really good time. It was nice to put a face to all the people I talk to day in and day out. It was actually a pretty awesome place; Beautiful weather, everything was pretty cheap and amazingly close to a ton of other places. A pretty good hub to have for sure.

On my last night I went over into Spain into a town/city ? called La Linea. Got a taxi to the border, get out and flash your passport and your in Spain (if its British they’re only interested in the cover – even when you go to airports it seems British passports are pretty much golden and don’t get scrutinized at all. I’m not complaining ofcourse – just saying.)

I went up the rock a few days before I left with a good friend who lives in one of the nicest apartments I’ve ever seen ! Anyway apart from taking a stupid route and not taking any water I really enjoyed the views. From the top you could see Morocco, all of Gib and Spain. It was pretty amazing when thinking of how geographically close these 3 places are but, how culturally different they are. I mean Gib is just sunny Britain (nothing wrong with that!).

I stayed a little longer in Gib hoping to meet Korn from PokerStrategy. I met a community manager in a bar one night and Korn seemed to have a big problem with me talking to him. I was accused of  soliciting him on 2+2 which is so LOL and I’d welcome any legal action. Its just complete unsubstantiated shit. I thought he was a great guy when talking to him and will admit to being on the hustle and trying to get him a VIP deal through iPokerVIP even although he was wearing a PS hoody but, unfortnatley the main thing that came accross in the conversation was how keen I was to meet Korn and learn in depth about him as a person and their business model.

Ofcourse it never happend and anyone wanting to discuss Korn’s warped view of the industry has to get their hands dirty in the threads which ultimatley resolves very little. People end up getting flamed and more entrenched in their original views. A face to face meeting would have been far more constructive.

Anyway it was the fact I was accused on 2+2 of doing a ton of illegal things and being dodgy which is just rubbish. I wire thousands to players every week and I’ve never heard anyone complain concerning the service I offer them.

Overall Gib was awesome and I was really pleased to meet people from Victor Chandler who are top guys. An affiliate or a player couldn’t ask for anymore.  I urge everyone to try and qualify for the beat victor challenge – you’ll have a great time.

As for iPoker – the network is still recovering and the software is being fixed. I really hope things turn around – I’d hate for the market to become even more top heavy. Although if it did and Stars and FTP got a slap on the wrist things would change so fast I could maybe establish myself as one of the big dogs. Playtech are a big company and I doubt they’ll let a market like this slip away.

Anyway that’s me for now

Tags: Gibraltar, iPoker News, online, Playtech, poker, Pokerstrategy, VC, vcpoker, victor chandler

Been a while since I’ve updated – I really want to keep the blog ticking along nicely, good for the SEO I think .

Finished my exams a week ago and the last one didn’t go so well. I had been up all night and was sat at the top floor which had some sort of sun magnifying dome right above my seat. It was just beaming down on me so strongly and to those who haven’t had the pleasure of staying up all night I’ll tell you a bright sun is the most disgusting thing ever.  Throughout the exams I guess I’ve been hedging my bets with the questions and it backfired in my last exam when the only question I could answer I just didn’t understand: “stratified reproduction curtails reproductive agency”. Pretty gay.

Since then I’ve been to London – donked off money which completley sucked. I ran fairly bad and actually felt I played pretty well. The sickest pot was a KcTs2c board where I got it in with KJ which is defo pretty light for 200bb + stacks at a 8 handed table but, I gave some chat which made myself look ridiculously weak (not deliberatley) so got myself in a spot where I could shove or fold. Anyways the guy, who I thought was fairly solid – tank called with 88 and obv the turn was an 8. Pot was just shy of £1k . So that kinda sucked.
I’m probably going to roll on down to London in the summer and give grinding the 2/5 game a shot for a month or something just to prove to myself I can beat it + I love the city it makes Edinburgh feel pretty small and mundane.

Next week I’m heading over to Gibraltar which should be decent. VC are putting me up in a really nice looking apartment which I’m obviously really grateful for. It should be good to get some nice weather, although the last week has been pretty awesome here.

After Gib I’m going to hang out in London for a bit and meet some people to discuss future affiliate related business ventures. Hopefully, I can make something really big happen this summer !

I’m also going to ‘hire’ my 1st employee this weekend. Sounds a bit more formal than it is but, I’m going to pay a friend a weekly wage to do some stuff. He’s easily capable of this stuff just the potential hazard with mates is they try and freeroll off you a bit but, its just going to be a rolling thing so if that happens  it won’t be a big deal. He will be liasing with new rooms, paying sub-affiliates and PMing on 2+2 mainly. Maybe doing other things like content for newsletters but, we’ll see how it goes. I’ll still be in contact with all the players as usual so he’s just really going to allow me to cast a wider net and hopefully, can help get iPokerVIP established on some other networks.

Anyway I guess that’s everything

Tags: iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, Live Poker, London, poker, Vic, Victoria Casino

Sorry for a lack of post lateley. I’ve got my 1st exam on Friday but, haven’t been revising as much as I should have been – hopefully get cracking soon (using this post for procrastination).

The ads are up, along with the thread and its good to see things going fairly smoothly. I’m going to put Winner Poker & maybe a few other more competitive offers up tommorow and change the text on the home page a little (my bounce rate is alarmingly high) and hopefully that should kick things up a bit.

iPokerVIP was based on 2 premises;
1. Under the table deals are harder to come by – the market is moving.
2. iPokerVIP showcases the best legal deals.

I’d say I’ve got 2 bang on but, for all the time people have speant scrutinising my site 90% of the under the table affiliates could have been cleared out. Its pretty ridiculous and demonstrates that the iPoker network probably don’t care much for the rules themselves – just that people aren’t seen breaking them and the status quo remains intact, at least superficially.

The irony is that there are people in Birmingham who work for playtech whose job it is to catch these affiliates. If 90% of players can find these deals how can’t these spies who work on it everyday ?

I think the main problem is that iPoker doesn’t have a clear vision of what kind of network it wants to be. Its like one week they want uber-aggro deals so they can compete for Euro players on Stars and Tilt and the next week they’re banishing these deals wanting a fishy network and claiming that’s the way forward.

Tough spot. For a company worth over $1bn you’d think they might at least come close to getting it right.

Tags: affiliate, ecoop, ipoker deals, iPoker News, ipoker vip, iPokerVIP.net, online, poker, Rakeback, software

So its 5am and I’m still awake. Had one late night mid week and that’s thrown me completley off sync. I’ve been going to sleep at 1 in the afternoon and getting up at 6pm and don’t feel to great about it. So hopefully a bit of writing will help me nod off and get up around 10 tommorow (5 hours pfft).

I deposited some money onto PKR to check it out and overall I don’t feel the softness of games outweigh the lack of volume / rakeback which you can find elsewhere. I just can’t multi table. So I just have withdrawn $1.2k now which is not bad for a days work. Bit of a hit and run on the site. Although because the money has been transferred in and out of my account in $ I’m sure it will earn HSBC a nice £20. Always good to do my bit for them. I guess on PKR there are too many distractions for the fish / donks to spew their money off optimally. They’re getting distracted by all the little gizmos. It just hasn’t really done it for me. I prefer SkyPoker when it comes to uber soft sites.

I’ve been doing some research into some new shares to buy. Well more like thinking not much research. There just seem to be some certain undeniable truths in the west at the moment. Consumerism overall will grow, people are becoming more money oriented, lazier and our world is becoming more driven by technology. I don’t mean I’m going to go out buy HP or Sony shares because they’re too widely spread and just because tech is on the grow in the longterm doesn’t mean Sony will be. I was thinking a company involved in nano-technology.

The other company in general I quite like is Mcdonalds. Are their sales going to go down anytime soon ? Who is realisitically going to challenge them ? They just seem to have it nailed down, although maybe their price reflects this. Another company would be Nike. I just find it hard to see how their actual business isn’t going to grow. There aren’t many legitimate competitors and the market for trainers, sports clothing, fashion etc is on the up and up. The population of the world isn’t going to buy less trainers in 2010 than it did in ’09. I mean I don’t have any facts whatsoever its just hard to see. Obviously, the company can have a fundamental flaw and regardless of what market its in it just won’t enjoy the same growth.

Onto something I know more about…
I guess a few readers will have followed the ipokervip legality debate on 2+2. My guess is playtech haven’t made a firm decision and now Titan are at it.

It was suggested to me that my thread was removed from affiiates/rb forum because of the word rakeback in the forum name. My site has no mention of RB anywhere and I categorically don’t offer it. Whereas RTR and friends seem to get off with it. I guess I can live with that but, now Titan are using the word Rake and Rakeback consistently in their ad campaign. I guess it might be good for the network and at the end of the day what they’re offerring doesn’t compare to me so it has its positives but, it just goes to show how having it in with the owner of the network can do wonders for you ! Or just being the same person altogether.

As you can see on the right I’ve got players on Titan and don’t have anything against them. If you have an advantage, I guess push it as far as you can. The fact remains a lot of other skins would be afraid of doing something as bold.

Cynics will come along and say I effectivley did the same thing with iPokerVIP and I guess the difference is a) In my honest opinion I didn’t think the methodology of my offers were different b) As a business I represent myself. Playtech are a PLC and the owner owns Titan. Whereas I just want to showcase the best offers I can find and don’t want to do anything apart from give players the best. Anyway, its nothing against Titan I’d do the same in their shoes. Its going to be an interesting next few months because I’d be suprised if their was no reaction to this.

New offers should be up this week along with the support thread. May is going to be a really big month on iPoker so its defo a better time to kick off compared to August or something.

Tags: iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, online, Playtech, titan, VC, VIP Deals

I feel a lot more positive about things. I kept on saying how the negative press from competitors just meant that ipokervip was such a threat but, didn’t really appreciate.

I got a bit too emotional at the weekend about the whole thing and kinda regret some of my posts and their bad spelling ! I was doing this on no sleep just trying to give almost instant rebuttle so that a pile of neg stuff didn’t come up.

I’m feeling a ton more positive mainly thanks to VC being behind me 100% which is really awesome. Although this issue is much bigger than ipokervip for them its really refreshing and certainly not something that they need to do.

A ton of new offers are coming on tommorow and I’ll be getting together some statements for 2+2. From there its up to them whether they will get behind the support thread and at least confirm they have emails from the right people that confirm the legality of the offers.

Hopefully, the new support thread should be up soon with the banners – I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said this.

* VC Poker Olympics *

Here is some great news for all my VC players. The next events in the Poker Olympics will be based to a higher degree on rake meaning that the limit players cant take advantage anymore. I don’t have the full details yet but, this actually means some of my players might take the next events seriously !

So its all positive ! Feel like I’m still growing up at the moment getting huge mood swings… I’m a weirdo.

Jamie

Tags: Bet365, Deals, iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, Rakeback, titan, vcpoker, vip

The support thread is live and I think its going pretty positivley although I can’t mention my site is iPokerVIP.net and not.com so I suspect I’m losing a ton of hits like that.

A link is here; http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/51/affiliates-rakeback/official-ipokervip-affiliate-support-thread-760802/

I think I’ll change the avatar and the OP maybe to something a bit more purposeful. Although the ads haven’t started yet the thread has been quite postitive with a ton of people supporting me which is always nice. I think a more informative OP will help things and as the thread progresses it will hopefully become less about trolls or people trying to lecture me and more about serving the players who are the reason its there in the 1st place.

Ads should be out soon and some new VIP deals on the site and then its just a question of waiting and seeing.

One time

Tags: Deals, iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, Playtech, vip

I kinda believe you get paid for your work 3 months ago when being an affiliate. In that case in July I should be Bill Gates !

Its actually completley ridiculous. Kinda realise how crazy it is when I could sit at my computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and be work intensivley for every minute.

So iPokerVIP has had any glitches ironed out, Noble went down, Paid 2+2, Banners got made, New players, new players , new players, new sub affiliates, new super affiliates and tons of other stuff. Been incredibly busy. Oh yeh and then paying all my subs which I’ve gta look forward to tonight !

On a more relaxed note I just got season 5 of the American Office through the post and had to get an American import (probably a step too far for the American office) because season 4 isn’t even out on DVD in the UK although season 6 is wrapping up on the TV in America. It works on my PS3 so pretty chuffed with that.

With the presence on 2+2 things aren’t going to get particuarly quieter so I’ll draft in a few of my mates to do some of the stuff and hopefully they don’t fuck it up too badly.

Tags: Deals, iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, online, poker, vip

iPokerVIP.Net is finally live and kicking. After countless updates and redrafts its now in a state I’m happy with although I’ll always find a little something wrong with it. Probably because in a perverse way I don’t want it to go live and fail – I’d much rather keep building and perfecting.

Anyway – its just a question of putting the ads on 2+2 (should be next week) and keeping my fingers crossed. I’m completley convinced the gap in the market is there and I’m equally certain nobody has filled it. The size of the niche and whether I’m the one to fill it remains to be seen. Besides I’m sure there are lots of failed businesses that were in the right niche but, just couldn’t capitlize. Although being in a growth area makes failing a shitload harder I’m sure.

As for my current player base things should turn around from Febuary (and it looks like March’s) horrible low. I’ve been busy with iPokerVIP and a ton of other things and its just harder to get players on these deals nowadays.
VC is running a $375k promotion called Poker Olympics which is going to kill. Its by far the best place to go on iPoker now and the dormant player’s under me (who all have a legitimate chance of doing very well with the promo) would be stupid to not come flooding back.
So I hope they’re not stupid !

April is going to be really busy – which is a good thing. No uni and I’m not really intending to revise for exams then either. 1st one is May 7th so 7 days (if I put my head down is defo all that is needed to pass which is 40%).

April is going to be interesting. I’ve kinda written off March though.

If iPokerVIP goes well I’ve got another affiliate concept ready to go which I’ll write more about later. Hopefully, it doesn’t take me as long to get my head around.

Tags: iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, poker promotion, race, rake, vcpoker, victor chandler, vip

Test page for ipokervip is up although the text for the offers is going to change that is pretty much what your going to see when it goes live: www.ipokervip.co.uk/test

It will most likely go live under the domain name: ipokervip.net although I own most of the major domains aside from .com which I just couldn’t get.

I’ve pretty much not been updating the blog because when ipokervip comes out I want to be updating it daily because of the increased traffic. Also if I decide to feed my latest posts into the site I’d like them to be updating as much as possible and keyword rich for SEO.

The site should go live this coming Wed which is the 24th of March with the ads on 2+2 and support thread following soon after. Really just hope I’ve not made a bad call lol.

The blog is going to get a complete revamp to skin it up as part of ipokervip or make it look similar. Allowing randoms to get at the offers from the blog.

So its all very exciting !

Tags: iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, poker promotion, race, rake, vcpoker, victor chandler, vip

The site will be up in a week or two but, in the meantime I’ve decided to use the Rakeback Request forum on 2+2 to try it out and see what sort of response I get.

The deal I’m offerring on 2+2 looks something like this:

1. Rake $500 get free Deuces Cracked membership for one month or a minimaxmod licence
2. Rake $1.5k get both
3. $600 1st deposit bonus
4. 25% Flat CashBack
5. Trade Points for Cash
6. Access to VIP Freerolls
7. 25k Hand Histories at a stake of your choice each month
8. Access to skin and network bonuses
9. Access to exclusive rake race in April (hopefully)

Considering that this is legitimate and is actually as good value as under the table deals I hope the response will be strong.

Even if its not at least I will know where and how to refine the deal for the big launch.